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Shumita Basu, Narrating: This is "In Conversation" from Apple News. I’m Shumita Basu. Today, the power of recording your family history.
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Basu, Narrating: When Elizabeth Keating’s mother died in 2014, Elizabeth had some regrets.
Elizabeth Keating: I realized after she died that I didn't know very much about her as a person.
Basu, Narrating: There were all of these gaps in what she knew about her mother’s life.
Keating: How she grew up and what formed her as a person.
Basu, Narrating: So many questions she had never asked her.
Keating: I wish I'd asked my mother about the kind of things that she saw every day when she was walking to school and the sort of fears that she had. And what was dating like? I wish I had known a lot more.
Basu, Narrating: Elizabeth is an anthropologist at the University of Texas at Austin. She’s traveled all over the world, talking to people, trying to understand how they communicate, how they articulate their values and their character. And she realized she’d never thought to apply that kind of thinking to her own mom. So, she came up with a list of questions that most of us haven’t asked our family members. Questions about their childhood, their friendships. And she tested this out with some of her students, sending them off to have conversations with their families.
Keating: They loved the project, and they brought back to class so many fascinating stories. It really opened up whole worlds to them and also to me. So, I became really determined to write a book so that other people wouldn't miss out, like I had, finding out about their mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and what their lives were like.
Basu, Narrating: Elizabeth’s book is called, "The Essential Questions." It’s a practical guide to recording interviews with your elder family members, taking you through each step of the process and listing questions you might’ve never thought to ask. She says the answers might surprise you and give you a fuller picture of this person’s life and how their experiences shaped the rest of your family.
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Keating: So many people have told me that after their parents and grandparents died, there were things they wish they'd asked them. And why don't we? [LAUGHS] Why don't we pass down more from one generation to the other? And the simple answer is that people never think to ask. The focus is usually on the younger generation. We don't realize how much we don't know about our parents and grandparents and how much we've put them into the role of mother or father or grandparent and not really examined them outside of that role.
Shumita Basu: Hmm.
Keating: As an example, I was interviewing a mother and daughter in the U.K., and they knew each other very well and were- had a very good relationship. But as the mother, who was in her 90s, was telling me some of the answers to the questions I was asking, suddenly, her daughter said, "Why haven't I ever heard this before? Why didn't I know this?" And her mother just said, "Because you never asked."
Shumita Basu: Hmm.
Keating: So, another reason is, of course, that we don't have the right questions, because a lot of what gets passed down from one generation to the next are big events, big cultural events, big family events. But we don't talk very much about ordinary life. These are people who have had thousands and thousands of interactions over their lifetime and have experienced some fascinating decades of history.
Shumita Basu: So, let's say that you decide that you, you want to do this. You want to take on this list of questions and bring it to a family member and say, "Will you do this with me?" How do you, how do you suggest people approach them? What's the pitch?
Keating: Yes, you definitely want to get a yes [LAUGHS] and not a no. And one way to do that is to ensure them that you are very curious to hear about life when they were growing up and that you really want to know more about them so that you can understand the family better. By the way, most people agree right away because people are very happy to talk about themselves…
Shumita Basu: [CHUCKLES] Most of the time. Yeah.
Keating: …especially to an eager listener. [LAUGHS]
Shumita Basu: Sure.
Keating: Especially when they get to tell about themselves and their stories, they’re very happy to do so.
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Basu, Narrating: Now, sometimes family members are reluctant to be interviewed.
Keating: Usually, the reluctance comes from the fact that they believe that their life is just too ordinary.
Basu, Narrating: In those cases, Elizabeth suggests just reassuring the person that you are genuinely very interested in what they have to say. And she’s got some warm-up questions to help get the conversation going.
Keating: Easy questions. Where were they born, and what year were they born in, and is there a story around their birth, favorite past times. Things like that that are easy for them to answer, and that helps everybody to relax.
Basu, Narrating: Elizabeth also strongly recommends you record the audio of your interview, whether that’s using a digital recorder or just your phone. Don’t bother writing notes. Just stay in the moment. Really focus on listening to what they’re saying. And someday, you’ll be glad to have that recording. Another piece of advice to keep in mind, right from the start of your conversation: Sit with silence, get comfortable with it.
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Keating: Silence is one of the most important techniques that an interviewer can cultivate. If you think about it, people are looking back many years, and they're recreating memories. So, this takes a little bit of time, and they need a bit of space to be able to think clearly about the past and to translate these memories into words that then will communicate the memories to them. So, it's really critical for you not to rush in to fill a silence. So, I tell people to try to be able to hold a seven-second silence, and that's a long time.
Shumita Basu: That is a long time.
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Shumita Basu: Seven true seconds is a long time.
Keating: Seven seconds. It's good training for yourself. Very often, people will not take that long before they fill the silence, but the key is you want them to fill the silence. You want them to decide what they're going to talk about next because we really want them to be in control of the narrative.
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Basu, Narrating: Questions that you might think are boring or totally ordinary can lead the way to really revealing stories. One of the early chapters of Elizabeth’s book focuses on the importance of the living space: asking about the home the person grew up in, how many bedrooms there were, where the family slept, where and how meals were shared, the view out the window.
Keating: As people are describing the house, they remember all kinds of things that went on in the house. And it's so easy to get people to remember things when they're situated within a space that they knew very well and they're recalling what that space was like. I'll give you an example. I was talking with a husband and wife about the book, and the wife told me that her husband always said to her he couldn't remember much about his childhood at all. She was a little bit frustrated by that, so she decided to ask him the first question in the book: to describe his childhood home.
Shumita Basu: Hmm.
Keating: And he got to describing the- his bedroom, and he started to see that he had a telescope. He could remember all the books that were in the room, and he started to tell his wife about the books and why he was so interested in astronomy. And it was a marvelous experience that she had being brought back into what he was like as a boy and what fascinated him.
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Other questions that can spark memories and stories$% What was your favorite part of your home? What was the home heated by? How does the neighborhood look today, compared to back then? Elizabeth says it’s crucial to ask questions that are really specific because they help you imagine the world through your family member’s eyes.
Keating: So, I ask the type of questions, and I advocate the kind of questions, that are going to reveal a lot of the tangible details that will recreate the sensory experience of being there. Another example, I was talking to someone who grew up in Iceland. And she said, as she was describing the home she grew up in, she said that she and her brother slept in the bedroom with their parents. And then she added, "Yes, and my mother had the knitting machine in there, and most of the time we would go to sleep to the sound of the knitting machine. [MIMICS KNITTING MACHINE]" She made the sound!
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Keating: And it was a wonderfully evocative memory that said a lot about what it was like to be in that house at that time when everybody was doing the sort of things that they did every day, which now we live in such a different world that it's very hard for us to imagine what it was like back then.
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Leta Hallowell: So, do you mind just saying your full name and your date of birth and how old you are?
Barney Hallowell: My full name is Angus Barney Hallowell. I was born on March 6th, 1942, and I am 81 years old.
Leta Hallowell: Very good. Um, okay, where were you born?
That’s my colleague, Leta Hallowell. She’s one of the producers of this show, and when she read Elizabeth’s book, she wanted to try out some of the questions with her own family. So, she asked her dad - who goes by his middle name, Barney - if he would sit down with her for an interview.
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Leta Hallowell: Can you tell me about the home you grew up in?
Barney Hallowell: Well, my father was a teacher at Andover all my life. Andover is a private school in Massachusetts. So, I lived in school housing at Andover, which was very nice. The thing I remember best about it was that we had radiators in those houses - big, old-fashioned cast-iron radiators - and they clunked when they got hot, and they would release steam, and the house was always very hot because of those radiators.
Leta Hallowell: Okay. Where did you eat your meals? Did the family eat together?
Barney Hallowell: Our family did eat supper together almost every night, usually in the dining room. You know, it was just at the time when people were getting televisions. And I remember we had our first television, I think it might have been in the dining room. It was a huge box with a tiny little screen, and we'd sit on the floor and watch television. But we didn't watch television during meals. Usually, we would sit down, but not that formally, and have supper. If my father was there, he would sit at the head of the table and my mother at the other, and we would, we kids would sit on the side. But yeah, we, we ate together, I think, quite a lot.
Leta Hallowell: And what was like a typical meal?
Barney Hallowell: My mother wasn't really a cook. I don't think she really liked cooking. And the other thing was that my parents always had cocktails. And you know, there was a lot of drinking in those days, which I hated. But we would just eat normal things, you know, roast beef or hamburgers or, um, you know, potatoes and… Yeah, yeah.
Leta Hallowell: Um, what did you hear when you woke up in the morning?
Barney Hallowell: What did I hear? My mother always slept late, so I always went to school and she wasn't awake. I had to get myself up and get ready for school. The only thing I can say is I loved to listen to the radio in the morning when I got up. "WBZ" in Boston was the station. A guy named Carl DeSuze or Dave Maynard had the morning show, and I would listen to that. And I can remember listening to the news reports about, particularly about the Korean War and, and stuff like that.
Leta Hallowell: Okay, last question. How would you compare your childhood home to the home you live in today?
Barney Hallowell: Wow. As I reflect now, I realize how much of the time my father was away because he was- not away from where we lived, but from the house because he was a teacher, which was very demanding. He was also a coach, and he was also the director of this, the theatrical productions at Andover. And so, he really wasn't around a lot, except at night. My mother didn't work, and so she was more or less a constant presence, but again, she had her own life. So, as kids, we had a lot of time on our own. But I, but I always also say, I mean, life was a little bit easier then. We were more self-sufficient. We didn't have electronics. We didn't have television, really. We played outside and, I don't know, it seems like life was simpler then. Happier… I'm not sure I would say it was happier, but it was simpler. That’s it.
Leta Hallowell: That’s it?
Barney Hallowell: Yeah.
Leta Hallowell: [LAUGHS] Thanks, Dad.
Barney Hallowell: Yeah.
Leta Hallowell: I love you.
Barney Hallowell: I love you.
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Basu, Narrating: Leta told me that doing this exercise with her dad was really rewarding and eye-opening. And she used some of the tips that Elizabeth’s been talking about, like recording the interview so you can stay in the moment and embracing that seven-second silence. "It was especially helpful," she said, "to have the list of questions right in front of her." Those questions about his childhood home and everyday life gave Leta a more complete picture of her dad at a specific point in time. Here are some other examples of questions Elizabeth recommends asking.
Keating: How do you think everyday interactions have changed since you were young? Can you describe the ways you interacted with older people, as strangers, when you were a child? For example, were there special ways to greet them or act around them? How did you and your parents greet one another the first thing in the morning when you were a child?
Basu, Narrating: These questions are all starting points. Elizabeth says, next, master the simple follow-up. When you hear an answer that could use more probing, resist the urge to ask "why" that happened. Instead, try asking "who" or "how" questions. She gave one example from her work when a daughter was interviewing her 90-year-old mother about becoming a doctor before that was common for women. Rather than asking why her mother became a doctor, she asked who supported her in becoming one.
Keating: It turned out that her father, as he told her many years later, had had to listen to many of his friends telling him that it was a waste for his daughter to go to medical school because she would probably get married and never practice as a doctor. It turned out she was a practicing doctor for many, many years, and he felt somewhat vindicated because he had supported her in that endeavor.
Shumita Basu: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Basu, Narrating: Another topic area to ask about that's ripe for revelations is romance and dating.
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Keating: I heard some fascinating stories from people who had grown up in different parts of the world. Places where there were very rigid structures in place to separate men and women. And how does courtship take place in a society like that? Well, it's fun to hear about the kind of [LAUGHS] resourcefulness that grandparents had when they were young in order to steal moments away, to let the person know that they were romantically interested in, of that interest, and to try to spend just a few moments with them.
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Keating: And then, of course, there are many societies where there are arranged marriages. But even arranged marriages are quite fascinating in how they take place. And the involvement of the potential bride and groom in this process is often much more active than many people think. And these are the sorts of things you can learn.
Shumita Basu: Mm. You're reminding me of a story that I definitely have recorded somewhere of my grandmother telling me the story about early courtship with my grandfather. And both my grandparents were Indian. My grandmother came from a Kashmiri family and my grandfather from a Bengali family. And it was, of course, a time when arranged marriages were also very common. And, uh, the two of them ended up meeting very far from home. They were both in London doing their studies. And she told me the story about how it was just kind of assumed that they would be engaged. But my grandfather didn't really formally propose to my grandmother. They were just sort of talking and making plans like they were going to have a life together. And, uh, she told me the story about how, one day, they were on the Tube, they were on the subway together.
Sarla Basu: The train was going [MIMICS TRAIN].
Shumita Basu: And she pointed out to him, "Hey, you've never proposed to me, by the way."
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Shumita Basu: "You just kind of assumed this whole time. You've never even asked me."
Sarla Basu: So, I suddenly said, I said, "Robin, you haven't proposed to me yet!"
Shumita Basu: And apparently, he turned, like, beet red, and got down on one knee in the subway, as it was swaying…
Keating: [LAUGHS] Aww.
Shumita Basu: …and, um, asked her the question and was very flustered about it.
Sarla Basu: So, he got really flaber- really got really, really nervous, you know. [LAUGHS] He quickly went on his knees and started proposing.
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And the train was jerking like that. It was so funny, I tell you. [LAUGHS]
Shumita Basu: And she totally let him off the hook and was like, "Of course I'm going to marry you. I'm just, you know, giving you a hard time."
Sarla Basu: We never thought of a proposal. It was just taken for granted because it was not needed at all. [LAUGHS] It was so funny.
Shumita Basu: It was so funny to hear that story because, for me, it made real the fact that my grandmother was a young woman at one point. She was young and she was like me and she was wanting to start a life with someone. And, um, it just, I don't know, hearing stories like that brings so much more completeness around the person.
Keating: Yes, that's one thing that, when you reach out across the generations, you can really have a lot of common experience in that time of life, and that's one of the special things about asking grandparents about courtship. It's funny because some of my students reported that their grandparents would look at them when they asked that question and say, "You must be kidding."
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Keating: But then they would start talking and they would say, "Wow, I haven't talked about this before with anyone."
Shumita Basu: Mm! Mm-hmm.
Keating: And they were at an age where, of course, they were ready to reveal things and very comfortable in what their life had become and ready to share. And they had great stories to share.
Shumita Basu: [CHUCKLES] That's so nice. In the book, you, you write that asking, "What do you wish people knew about you?" became one of your favorite questions in your research. Why was that? And what were some of the answers that you would get to that question?
Keating: It's a really fun question to ask and to hear the answers to because sometimes I heard about people who said, "Well, you know, I'm actually quite a good dancer. And when I was a child, I was in some theater productions." One person said that she wished that people knew how cool she'd been when she was a teenager.
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Keating: She had done lots of cool things: going to Paris, hanging out with Andy Warhol. And when people saw her today, she said they just see this old granny, and they think she's never done much of interest.
Shumita Basu: Mm.
Keating: So, lots of fun things can come out of that question.
Shumita Basu: [CHUCKLES] So, for a lot of this conversation, we've focused on what it is like to be wearing the interviewer's hat for this experience. But what do interview subjects say that they get out of this experience? the parents and the grandparents.
Keating: The parents and the grandparents say things like, "I haven't thought about these things in years. I thought I'd forgotten all about this." They're also quite charmed and appreciative of the attention from the younger generation. So, what I hear from them is that they wish more people were interested.
Shumita Basu: Mm.
Keating: And they're very grateful for an opportunity to talk in depth about their memories and about their experiences growing up. And there's quite a lot of research on loneliness of older people. And I think one of the things that can help to address the loneliness of older people is to ask them questions about what society was like when they were growing up and what their experiences were like and how the world looked to them at that time.
Shumita Basu: Mm. What do you hope is revealed to people through this process, about themselves, about the person they've interviewed, their family, even society at large? What kinds of, what kinds of revelations do you hope people find?
Keating: The first revelation that I hope people have is that their parent or their grandparent is an individual and not just a family role. That they had hopes and dreams, and they've had experiences that are unique that they often don't get to share, which creates a picture of them as an individual, as a unique individual, and also creates both similarities between the generations or reveals similarities between the generations and also reveals differences. So, for example, one of my students was interviewing her grandparent, and she told the class that she realized as she was doing the interview that her grandmother, at the same age she was now doing this interview, already had her first child and had to drop out of school in the sixth grade.
Shumita Basu: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Keating: And my student realized that here she was studying neuroscience at the University of Texas, Austin and how very different their experiences had been just in this short space of time. And she also realized, though, at the same time, there were many things they had in common in making their way through life and creating their futures.
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Shumita Basu: Elizabeth, I really enjoyed speaking with you. Thank you so much for your time.
Keating: Thank you very much.
Basu, Narrating: Elizabeth Keating is an anthropology professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of the book "The Essential Questions: Interview Your Family to Uncover Stories and Bridge Generations." You can find it on Apple Books. And if you're enjoying this show, "Apple News In Conversation," please don't forget to follow us, and leave us a rating and review, in Apple Podcasts. Thanks!
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